


Choice

by SnowyWolff



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Childhood Friends, Falling In Love, Multi, Polyamory, Trans!Hungary, m/m/f
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23260834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowyWolff/pseuds/SnowyWolff
Summary: Life was filled with choices. Erzsébet had a knack for picking the wrong ones.They were not.
Relationships: Austria/Hungary/Prussia (Hetalia)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43





	Choice

When Erzsébet had been younger, when she would still call herself the King of the Playground, the adults around her always liked to talk about the choices she would have to make in the long run toward adulthood and after.

Oh, how her mother used to like to go on about the importance of making the _right_ choices. Erzsébet, however, had a knack for making the wrong choices.

It started with her feeling like a _her_ and not the him she had been born as. Her mother had, very reluctantly, gone along with the change, mostly on the insistence of Erzsébet’s father, who cared a little less about their reputation and a little more for Erzsébet’s wellbeing.

So Erzsébet had been allowed to be Erzsébet from a young age and no one dared to raise a fuss about it either. If anyone from the playground did, they would not only have to deal with Erzsébet shoving sand down their throat, but also with her Knight valiantly holding the target down and her Prince standing guard for potential parental threats.

Her Knight and Prince were another choice she would have to make in the future, according to _everyone_ anyway. Because, her mother had ever so primly said, girls were meant to pick one boy and one boy only to be together with. Erzsébet hadn't understood then just what was meant with being together with, except that it meant her parents sometimes exchanged kisses, and cold words, and slept in different bedrooms when they fought again.

Erzsébet didn't really feel either Gilbert or Roderich deserved that treatment, and the thought of kissing either sounded pretty gross too, so she simply opted to ignore that choice.

Except, it was the one choice that haunted her wherever she goes. Even after her parents divorced and she came to live with her father, her mother vanishing so completely from the picture she sometimes forgets she ever had one, people around her still asked which boy was her boyfriend and which was the unfortunate third wheel.

Erzsébet thought about it during one of their sleepovers, when Gilbert was shoving fistfuls of popcorn in his mouth on her one side and Roderich dozing on her other, glasses askew.

The light of the television flickered, the only source of light in Gilbert’s dark basement.

Neither was her boyfriend. Neither was a third wheel. Sometimes she wondered if she was their third wheel, because she had seen the way Gilbert looked at Roderich sometimes, and the way Roderich pretended he wasn't looking at Gilbert at all.

And then Gilbert was looking at her, with the movie temporarily forgotten behind him and the shadows painting the angles of his face even sharper. He hesitated for a moment, but then he allowed himself to fall sideways and onto her lap. For some reason, it was a signal for Roderich to collapse against her side as well, and she sighed as she removed the glasses digging into her shoulder.

No, she wasn't a third wheel either.

And so she delayed this choice because she didn’t think she could ever choose between her two best friends. Once, she had tried to weigh the pros and cons of both Gilbert and Roderich, but she had never finished the list for she had felt like her mother, assessing her friends as if they were mere items that could be replaced by more prestigious ones when they failed to satisfy.

Did she want to date either of them? She honestly didn’t know. Not when she was fifteen. Not when she was sixteen. Not when she was seventeen.

When she was eighteen, and in her senior year of high school, something did change. Because when spring slowly began to turn into summer and the weather began to warm the air, Erzsébet had a realization.

It was one of those early, but rare, sweltering days, where the humidity made your sweat stick to your skin, and Erzsébet had fled to the Edelstein residence, who had the luxury of having a pool in the backyard.

She let herself in through the back gate, took the turn to the pool around the hedge, and froze.

Gilbert stood with his back—his _bare_ back—toward her, swim shorts hugging his butt in a way that increased the temperature just a little more. Water ran down his back in perfect little rivets and when he brushed a hand through his hair, sticking it up in the back, Erzsébet was suddenly very aware of how attractive he could be.

You know, until he turned around and opened his big, stupid mouth because he was still Gilbert in the end, the kid who she used to push over in the sandbox when he bragged too much.

“Erzsi! ‘S about time you got here. Rod’s been a real pansy,” Gilbert complained, ignoring the huffy indignation from Roderich, who was lounging on a chair behind him.

Erzsébet found her motor functions before her cognitive ones, so she marched past Gil, pushed him into the pool with one hand, and tossed her bag on an empty lawn chair with the other.

As Gilbert sputtered to the surface, she removed her dress, no longer as self-conscious about herself around them as she used to be, especially not now she had been on HRT for four years. Of course, hormones were by no means an instant solution to her dysphoria, but it was a relief nonetheless.

Roderich had been hiding a smile behind his hand and coughed to hide it a little more, adjusting his glasses.

“Much appreciated, Erzsébet,” he said. He was wearing a flimsy t-shirt that hung off his skinny shoulders, but had actually bothered with a pair of trunks, so he must be planning on doing some swimming, but probably wished to wait until there would be a witness and potential ally for any probable murder attempts.

Erzsébet took a seat on the edge of the pool, dipping her legs into the blissfully cool water. Gilbert swam up to her with a grin, hanging onto the side, brushing her legs.

“You could have come off your lazy ass and do it yourself,” Gilbert said, turning to Roderich.

“And deny Erzsébet the pleasure?” Roderich took his place on her other side. “How cruel would that be?”

Gilbert rolled his eyes, then poked Erzsébet’s leg at the lack of response. “Hey, you okay? You’re normally never this quiet when we bicker.”

“Just thoughtful.” She quickly brushed her fingers through her hair, then leant back on her hands with a heavy sigh. “Ah, I think the heat is getting to me.”

“Oh, well, I know what to do about that.”

And Gilbert didn’t even hesitate in pulling Erzsébet in and under, laughing as she surfaced—laughing a lot less when she caught him in a headlock.

Roderich wisely kept out of the struggle, picking at his nails until the two lost interest in drowning one another. Erzsébet vaguely noticed him getting up and going inside, only to return a few minutes later with a tray of iced drinks and sandwiches.

Erzsébet reclaimed her seat next to Roderich, and Gilbert took his beside her. Now that his shoulders had taken on a redder tint and he was grinning that stupid smile of his, she didn’t feel nearly as impressed with him as she had been before, so she dismissed it as a momentary lapse in sanity.

Her momentary lapse in sanity returned two weeks later, when Roderich came over to her house and they were lazing on her bed, giggling over silly teen magazines.

He sat up to stretch with a yawn, waiting for the satisfying _pop_ of his spine. Not that Erzsébet necessarily noticed that because she was a little preoccupied with the sliver of skin visible as his shirt rode up.

It was so silly to feel affected by something so small, but when she looked up and noticed the focused frown that drew his eyebrows together and the mild pucker of his lips as he cleaned his glasses and she realized that maybe it was not so small and silly after all.

When Gilbert barrelled in not an hour later and began to tease Roderich relentlessly, Erzsébet left to get snacks and returned to find them sitting shoulder by shoulder against the bed frame, holding hands.

Gilbert offered his free hand to her and pulled her up to his side. She dropped her head on his shoulder with a soft sigh.

The lapses in sanity stretched until they were a genuine state of being, but Erzsébet didn’t know how to voice it to Roderich and Gilbert, so she didn’t mention it at all.

Somehow they knew anyway.

When prom rolled up, it was an unspoken agreement they would go with the three of them.

Her father gave a weary smile as she came downstairs in a long dress and hugged her tightly, calling her beautiful and muttering something about “the luck of those boys”, which made Erzsébet giggle and her father’s smile relax into something much more genuine.

Gilbert arrived first, wearing a suit too big for his shoulders and offering a pink corsage with a little too much zest. It didn’t quite match her dress, but Erzsébet couldn’t care less as she clasped it around her left wrist.

Roderich came with the car, a perfectly cut suit and another pink corsage. He went pink in the face too when he realized this, snapping at Gilbert’s teasing before carefully wrapping it around Erzsébet’s free wrist.

Her father still insisted on a picture and Erzsébet was so grateful for his ease in this, for never making her choose. Maybe it was because he had had to make one of the most difficult choices in his life. Maybe it was just because he loved her and knew she loved them, Roderich and Gilbert, both.

Prom itself was rather strange because people seemed to think Erzsébet was being greedy, taking both the soccer star and the first violinist for herself, or that someone was thirdwheeling, or that they were there as just friends.

But they _weren_ _’t_. Because Roderich kept holding her hand and even smiled at Gilbert once or twice or the entire night. And Gilbert kept touching them both unnecessarily, hand on the small of Roderich’s back or an arm winding around Erzsébet’s waist. And Erzsébet, when they stood on her porch just barely past midnight, with the crickets chirping and the porch light offering the barest of illumination, pulled them in a tight, tight hug, first kissing Roderich’s cheek and then Gilbert’s.

“I love you both,” she whispered, head bowed. “I don’t care what anyone says; I don’t want to choose.”

Roderich sighed very softly while Gilbert tightened his arms around them. She could feel the press of their lips against her hairline and it was enough for her.

Her father opened the door eventually, not looking entirely surprised to see them all clinging to each other on the porch, and allowed for them to stay over, so long as they made sure their parents were aware.

When they all scooted into Erzsébet’s bed, and she made sure Roderich and Gilbert were tucked against her on either side, she felt she had made the right choice, for once. Maybe it was an unconventional choice, sure, but between Roderich’s calm decisiveness and Gilbert’s excitable tenacity, Erzsébet couldn’t even pretend to want to choose.

It was warmer like this anyway, she thought as Gilbert threw an arm over her waist and Roderich found her hand to hold. Warmer, and absolutely, most definitely, the right choice.

**Author's Note:**

> A lil something something to pass our days in isolation,,,,


End file.
